Tag Archives: obama

My Thought on the Debt Crisis & Government Shutdown

I am truly scared for the future of the United States. Wasn’t it just a few months ago that we were having another discussion in Congress related to raising the debt limit? That disaster was averted by allowing the sequestration cuts. What I don’t understand is how this is all happening again. It should simply be a matter of not spending more than you make.

Rather than continuing to raise the debt limit, why don’t we decrease spending or at least hold it at the level of inflation. Congress should be forced to pass a balanced budget each year that does not spend more than it takes in in taxes (exceptions could be made for War and other emergencies). The welfare and entitlement system should be overhauled so that only truly qualified people are allowed to be on it as a temporizing measure. Revenue increasing (code word for increasing taxes) is not the way to go about it.

The United States, I think, is not too far gone that we could still save ourselves if the federal government just stepped out of the way. Lower taxes to encourage productivity. Increase the number of green cards available for the talented foreigners that would still love to come to this country. And, we must do this before China grabs them with talks of their version of what has always been called, ‘the American Dream.’

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Rising Inequality Under Obama

Obama proclaimed in [his] second Inaugural Address, “our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.” But that is exactly what is happening under Obama’s economy.

Under Reagan, the rich got richer and the poor got richer. After Reaganomics took hold in 1983, incomes for every quintile, from the top 20% to the bottom 20%, rose. The poverty rate also declined for every year thereafter while Reagan was President.

But President Obama is following exactly the opposite of every policy of Reaganomics, so he is getting basically the opposite results. The incomes of the top 20% have still been rising under Obama. But the incomes of everyone else, the bottom 80%, have been falling!

Source: The American Spectator: Obama’s Rising Inequality

And, from the Investor Business Daily:

Research by University of California economist Emmanuel Saez shows that since the Obama recovery started in June 2009, the average income of the top 1% grew 11.2% in real terms through 2011.

The bottom 99%, in contrast, saw their incomes shrink by 0.4%.

As a result, 121% of the gains in real income during Obama’s recovery have gone to the top 1%. By comparison, the top 1% captured 65% of income gains during the Bush expansion of 2002-07, and 45% of the gains under Clinton’s expansion in the 1990s.

The Census Bureau’s official measure of income inequality — called the Gini index — shows similar results. During the Bush years, the index was flat overall — finishing in 2008 exactly where it started in 2001.

It’s gone up each year since Obama has been president and now stands at all-time highs.

Heck, even the liberal Daily Kos understands this: Income Inequality has grown much faster under Obama than George W. Bush

Obamaphones

Here’s one more example of why our government is in so much debt. There’s just so many examples of this that it is outrageous!

Confession: You’re paying my phone bill.

In the past month, I have received three shiny new cell phones, courtesy of American taxpayers, that should never have fallen into my hands.

The Federal Communications Commission oversees the so-called Lifeline program, created in 1984 to make sure impoverished Americans had telephone service available to call their moms, bosses, and 911. In 2008, the FCC expanded the program to offer subsidized cell-phone service, and since then, the expenses of running the program have soared. In 2012, the program’s costs had risen to $2.189 billion, up from $822 million before wireless carriers were included. As of June, there were 13.8 million active Lifeline subscriptions.

To be eligible for Lifeline, the applicant is supposed to be receiving some significant government benefit — food stamps, Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, public housing assistance, etc. But because welfare eligibility has expanded under the Obama administration, more people than ever before are qualified to receive “free” cell-phone service — part of the reason why Lifeline mobiles have become commonly known as Obamaphones. Alternatively, applicants can qualify if their household income is less than 136 percent of the federal poverty line.

Continue reading at National Review Online: Me and My Obamaphones

And, of course you can’t talk about Obamaphones without including the obligatory and classic YouTube video:

Son Of Strelka, Son Of God (narrated by Obama)

Hey y’all. Long time no see. For the past four years, I’ve been working slowly but obsessively on a very odd project. Bit by bit I’ve dissected Obama’s self-read autobiography into thousands of very short phrases, usually one to ten words or so, and have used these snippets to tell a completely different story from the original. I’ve then set the story to music. The story is called Son Of Strelka, Son Of God. Broadly speaking, it tells the story of an ugly dog-faced demigod who recreates the world after it is destroyed. It’s about thirty minutes long, and lies in some weird grey area between audiobook and electronic music.

The Something Awful Forums

Head to the forums on the link above to download the work in its entirety. According to yalelawtech.org, the “use of Barack Obama’s voice is fair and allowed according to the law.”

Animations that people made to go along with the first two chapters of the audio book are available here. It must have been a lot of hard work, but the end result is amazing. You can’t tell at all that the words are out of order.

The GOP’s Alternative Budget

Under the president’s plan, spending will top $4 trillion this year alone, and consume 28.5% of our nation’s economy. His plan would mean a $1 trillion increase to the already unsustainable spending growth of our nation’s entitlement programs — including a “down payment” toward government-controlled health care and education; a $1.5 trillion tax increase to further shackle the small businesses and investors we rely on to create jobs; a massive increase in energy costs for families via cap and trade. Moreover, the Obama plan would result in an exploding deficit, a doubling of the nation’s debt in five years, and an increase of that debt to more than 82% of our nation’s GDP by the last year of the budget. This approach will ultimately debase our currency and reduce the living standards of the American people.

Instead of doubling the debt in five years, and tripling it in 10, the Republican budget curbs the explosion in spending called for by the president and his party. Our plan halts the borrow-and-spend philosophy that brought about today’s economic problems, and puts a stop to heaping ever-growing debt on future generations — and it does so by controlling spending, not by raising taxes. The greatest difference lies in the size of government our budgets achieve over time (see nearby chart).

Continue to read on The Wall Street Journal Opinion Article

This article is written by Mr. Paul Ryan, from Wisconsin, who is the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee. It talks about the Republican’s alternative plan to Obama’s “European-style big government” that “works to accomplish four main goals: 1) fulfill the mission of health and retirement security; 2) control our nation’s debts; 3) put the economy on a path of growth and leadership in the global economy; and 4) preserve the American legacy of leaving the next generation better off.”

What Stimulus?

They call it “stimulus” legislation, but the economic measures racing through Congress would devote tens of billions of dollars to causes that have little to do with jolting the country out of recession.

Yes, there are many billions of dollars in “ready-to-go” job-creating projects in President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus bill. But there are also plenty of items that are just unfinished business for Congress’ old bulls.

Analysis: Stimulus bill that’s not all stimulating

According to Congressional Budget Office estimates, a mere $26 billion of the House stimulus bill’s $355 billion in new spending would actually be spent in the current fiscal year, and just $110 billion would be spent by the end of 2010. This is highly embarrassing given that Congress’s justification for passing this bill so urgently is to help the economy right now, if not sooner.
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Intolerance in the classroom

As the media keeps gushing on about how America has finally adopted tolerance as the great virtue, and that we’re all united now, let’s consider the Brave Catherine Vogt Experiment.

Catherine Vogt, 14, is an Illinois 8th grader, the daughter of a liberal mom and a conservative dad. She wanted to conduct an experiment in political tolerance and diversity of opinion at her school in the liberal suburb of Oak Park.

She noticed that fellow students at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama for president. His campaign kept preaching “inclusion,” and she decided to see how included she could be.

So just before the election, Catherine consulted with her history teacher, then bravely wore a unique T-shirt to school and recorded the comments of teachers and students in her journal. The T-shirt bore the simple yet quite subversive words drawn with a red marker:

“McCain Girl.”

“I was just really curious how they’d react to something that different, because a lot of people at my school wore Obama shirts and they are big Obama supporters,” Catherine told us. “I just really wanted to see what their reaction would be.”

Immediately, Catherine learned she was stupid for wearing a shirt with Republican John McCain’s name. Not merely stupid. Very stupid.

“People were upset. But they started saying things, calling me very stupid, telling me my shirt was stupid and I shouldn’t be wearing it,” Catherine said.

Then it got worse. …

Continue reading, Tolerance fails T-shirt test.

She ultimately turned her experience in as a history report. And then as a class they discussed the issues of intolerance:

… she turned her journal into a report for her history teacher, earning Catherine extra credit. We asked the teacher, Norma Cassin-Pountney, whether it was ironic that Catherine would be subject to such intolerance from pro-Obama supporters in a community that prides itself on its liberal outlook.

“That’s what we discussed,” Cassin-Pountney said about the debate in the classroom when the experiment was revealed. “I said, here you are, promoting this person [Obama] that believes we are all equal and included, and look what you’ve done? The students were kind of like, ‘Oh, yeah.’ I think they got it.”

In order to be more scientific, this would have needed to be a coordinated effort throughout the country. For example, with this single test, we don’t know what the reaction would have been had Catherine worn the Obama t-shirt first. An interesting experiment still.

My Worry This Election Season

I’m really worried that too many young people will look at the superficial Obama, the well-spoken man who promises much, and yet fail to understand that taxing and creating a larger central government are not ways to improve the economy. If Obama does win, I’ll at least be fortunate enough to be earning a small salary as a resident for his single four-year term and, therefore, not have to distribute as much of my hard work to the large number of Americans that contribute little but expect the government to provide everything for them. One can only hope that he is promising this redistribution only to get elected and then back down to a moderate view. Unfortunately, that may not be the case and it may take four years for the American people to realize the fallacy of their ways. Hopefully, McCain will be able to get the message out on the drastic difference between him and Obama on health care, the economy, and the military.

Sadly, here’s a YouTube video of a typical starry eyed Obama supporter, saying “I won’t have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won’t have to worry about paying my mortgage. If I help him, he’s gonna help me.” Just what does she think Obama will do? Give her free money, free health care, free gas? The money has to come from somewhere. What slippery slope towards socialism are we being led down?

Sacrifice and Big Promises

One of the most interesting questions at last week’s debate was from a woman asking what sacrifices John McCain and Barack Obama would ask of Americans “to get out of the economic morass.”

The questioner alluded to World War II, the hallmark usually cited by people miffed that the war on terror doesn’t involve meatless days. Of course, our troops do not lack for meat and, what with blue bins, every day’s a mandatory scrap-metal drive, so WW II’s hardly a relevant template.

McCain’s answer, then, was encouragingly blunt: “There are some programs we may have to eliminate.”

The federal budget has become a $2.9 trillion buffet with delicacies for everyone — the nonpartisan Tax Foundation last year estimated that 67% of American households are treated to more in government spending than they ever pay in taxes. If you’re talking shared sacrifice, the only realistic starting point is government spending.

Obama, meanwhile, said that maybe you should get a higher-mileage car. Any ex-Hummer dealer could tell you that most people did that without Obama’s help.

Then Obama went on to say this shared sacrifice would entail a tax cut for 95% of us.

Bluntly: No. First, it’s not a tax cut if you’re already paying nothing, net, to the feds, as 40% of households do. It’s a refundable credit, which means Uncle Sam takes money from someone else and gives it to you. The old-fashioned word for this is “welfare.”

More practically, you’re not going to get even that. The nonpartisan U.S. Budget Watch calculates that Obama has proposed $990 billion in new spending for his first term. The equally nonpartisan National Taxpayers Union pegs Obama’s promises at $293 billion a year, three times its estimate for McCain. None of this accounts for the cost of rescuing our economy. So, no, 95% of us won’t get a nicer cut of federal pelf. …

Continue reading on JSOnline, Sacrifice and big promises.

Obama’s Economic Agenda

Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s mantra for change in economic policies amounts to this: a huge increase in redistribution of income at the hands of the federal government. While Obama refers to this as a “net” tax cut, raising taxes on the top 5 percent and lowering taxes or increasing outright benefits for the other 95 percent simply amounts to an indisputably massive increase in redistribution and ultimately very little meaningful change.

To hear Obama and other Democrats describe our current policies, one might think that we do very little to help the poor and disadvantaged. But Americans already transfer more than a trillion dollars a year to low-income households. That’s a lot of money. Before we endorse Obama’s agenda of more of the same, shouldn’t we ask him what benefits a trillion dollars a year have yielded so far? Has that money reduced dependency? Has it solved the problems associated with poverty and inequality? Are more disadvantaged children being raised in stable two-parent families today than 50 years ago?

Since Obama believes that “in America, prosperity has always risen from the bottom up,” he should be genuinely concerned with imposing higher marginal tax rates on non-rich Americans. But economists will be more concerned with the higher rates on that top 5 percent because we know that the “rich” play a crucial role in financing the economy’s investments and new business start-ups and in producing the technological innovations so critical to improving our prosperity. Higher marginal tax rates on the “rich” are certain to reduce the contributions they make to the well being of all Americans.

Increasing marginal tax rates as Obama proposes may in the short run improve the material well-being of lower income Americans (at the expense of higher income Americans), but in the long run it will lead to slower economic growth and lower incomes for most people in the future. Economic research suggests that our current redistributive policies have already reduced the average American’s before-tax income by 25 percent. This is the hidden cost of redistribution that is well documented in economics literature, but rarely acknowledged in media discussions. That cost will become larger in the future if Obama’s economic agenda is put into place.

Continue reading, Obama’s Economic Agenda: This Is Change?